Sports letters to the editor

December 16, 2012

As a Penn State graduate who has been a football season ticket holder for 44 consecutive years, I am quite pleased that the Maxwell Football Club has chosen to honor the Nittany Lion senior football players with the Thomas Brookshier Spirit Award on March 1.

Most of the country's sports enthusiasts, especially the national media, figured this team would be lucky to win three or four games at best.

Most are now treating this eight-win season as a miracle of Biblical proportions. I'm sure that's why the Maxwell Club decided to honor this fine group of student athletes in this fashion.

Ron Jaworski, president of the Maxwell Club, said he was astonished by the performances of these senior athletes. Interestingly, a vast majority of Penn State alumni like me were not the least bit surprised. Why might you ask?

These Penn State seniors were recruited and coached by one Joseph V. Paterno. This is the same Coach Paterno whose Grand Experiment consistently turned out similar high-character young men each year of his sterling career.

Ironically, this is the same Joe Paterno who had his name stricken from the Maxwell Club Coach of the Year Award in November of 2011.

Much like the Big Ten and others, the Maxwell Club rushed to judgment without the benefit of due process.

During the March 1 awards ceremony, I would suggest that Paterno should be given some credit for this team's amazing performance in light of the unfair NCAA sanctions they were required to endure.

I believe Coach Bill O'Brien would be the first to say that he inherited an outstanding group of seniors, all of whom exhibited "Success with Honor," on which he could begin building his own legacy at Penn State.

How could the Maxwell Club best honor these Nittany Lions on March 1? Announce that Joe Paterno's name is being rightfully restored on their Coach of the Year Award.

Thomas M. Bradley

Altoona

(Editor's note: The writer of this letter is not Penn State's former defensive coordinator and longtime assistant coach.)

Joyner's temporary appointment, which carries with it a monthly salary of $33,000, is a perfect example of the cronyism that continues to plague the the Board of Trustees.

University leaders and their friends should not profit personally from their positions of power. But after helping to orchestrate one of the worst public relations disasters in the history of corporate America, Joyner's colleagues handed him prominent job with a whopping $396,000 salary.

Like the other trustees who presided over the Sandusky crisis last year, he should be long gone by now. Instead, Joyner is expected to remain in his position through 2014.

Meanwhile, the culture of corporate cronyism that put him there prevails.

Nine months ago, I proposed ethics rules that, among other things, would prevent Penn State trustees from being hired by the university until they've left the board for at least a year. The idea isn't new. State politicians and employees have faced the same restriction for years.

So why is it such a hard concept for trustees to grasp?

Since the Sandusky crisis, Penn State has done nothing to prevent similar conflicts of interest from recurring. Lubrano wants to change that. Hopefully his fellow trustees will follow suit.

Ryan Bagwell

Middleton, WI

(Editor's note: The author ran for a berth on the Penn State Board of Trustees in May but did not finish among the top three vote getters that were awarded seats.)

Bring back Band Day

I marched in the high school band and have fond memories of going to old Beaver Field (the one by the Nittany Lion Inn) and marching in Band Day during at halftime and then in a long parade through State College.

With all of the empty seats now at Beaver Stadium, it's time to fill them with high school students from throughout Pennsylvania. It might just give some in-state students the inspiration to enroll at Penn State and perhaps some may want to try out for Penn State sports.